Imprisoned
by Acerbitas
Summary: Ten drabbles, collectively titled 'Imprisoned,' dealing with the broken Hyuuga family. The first three deal with Hinata, Hiashi, then Neji. The new chapter contains NarutoxHinata, NejixHinata, Hinata and Neji, then the whole family.
1. Chapter 1

** Imprisoned **

Drabbles – Hyuuga Family - 1-3 of 10

1. Caught - Hinata

The brambles clung viciously to her kimono, claws snagging and tearing the expensive masterpiece. She was not good at finding her way through the forest in the dark. Every bush seemed to knit in around her tender form, first merely curious, then greedy and grabbing. She tugged the briars and twigs gently from her clothing, determined to keep down rising hysteria, refusing to become victim to this maze of darkened trees.

It was her fault she was lost. She had been the one who had run away and hid, hiding her humiliation in the fading light of sunset.

Her fingers had crushed the warm dirt beneath them, exposing a harshness she only could show to the inanimate. She had known beforehand she would be bowed at her father's feet, forehead touching into the dirt, begging his forgiveness for her inevitable failure. She had known before she had started she would lose.

She had known that she might never make him proud. But because she couldn't have his pride, all she wanted from him was a simple acknowledgment that she had tried.

She i _had_ tried. She had tried so very, i _very /i _ hard.

But all he had done was frown. Frown deeply, his cold features a puzzle, pieces scattered haphazardly across the floor. She couldn't even find them all.

"Leave me."

She had quivered beneath the icy chill in his voice.

He had turned from her, lowering his head. Ashamed of her.

She didn't know how to make sense of the pieces. She didn't know how to put them together. Endlessly she had fought, knees straining to bear her broken body. Up she had risen, strong against her cousin's wrath, over and over, prepared to die. Naruto had seen her, acknowledged her, been aware of her presence. For once in her life, the dull pain in her chest had been suppressed, buried temporarily for a beautiful moment of self-acceptance.

But all he saw was the same failure. Trying was not good enough. Improving was not good enough. Nothing she did was good enough. She wanted to curl up into a protective ball, hiding from him, not doing anything, anything at all.

At least then she would no longer fall short.

She had stood up, bowed deeply to his unresponsive back. "I understand." But she hadn't. Not really.

She knew that he wanted a child he could be proud of. She knew he needed a heiress who would carry on the family name with confidence and strength.

She couldn't offer him any of this.

But he was her father too. She had hoped that the man that was her father would see something in her, something in her that would make him smile. But he always frowned. Why wouldn't he smile? She wanted him to smile.

The brambles were getting worse as she went along, clinging more. Her self-made path was fading. Where had she made a mistake? Where had she turned wrong in this maze of trees?

She could just see the stares at her ruined kimono. She wanted sleep in this labyrinth instead.

But morning was far away, so she kept going, forcing the sharp thorns out of the way, making herself move forward.

Even if the entire forest rose up against her, she couldn't stop moving forward.

2. Cracked - Hiashi

The stone basin was cracked down the middle, a ragged scar slicing through its innards. It still stood proud and tall, but it was lying to itself. Its heart had been cracked. Whenever rainwater danced into its bowl, it spilled out. Whenever a bird rested, its throat remained parched. No one could deny the garden spread around its base was pristine, spilling color, flaunting design. Putting on a bright face for important family guests.

But the garden was dependant on the basin for its center, and the basin was cracked down the middle.

Hiashi hated that clump of stone. When he had been a child, he had stretched his unblemished fingers into the crack, seeing how far he could stick them inside. He had stood on top of it at five years old, gazing triumphant over his taken territory, surveying the world as he had been taught to see it. He ruled over his domain. Everything had looked so perfect then. He hadn't thought about the crack. He hadn't even thought about his brother below, gazing upwards, eyes wide with quiet adoration.

He had never looked for and had never seen the jealously lurking behind that searching gaze. He hadn't been taught to see it, because it wasn't supposed to be there.

When things weren't supposed to be there, when they were mistakes, when they were flawed, they brought the family to shame. They brought i _him /i _ to shame, because he was the one who was supposed to be perfect, the one to straighten everything out for everyone else. The one who knew what to do, even though the truth was that sometimes he was just as lost as they were. He couldn't show this fatal flaw, this weakness, even though deep embarrassment clung to him like a disease. Humiliation stiffened his body into rigidity. His daughter pained him whenever he saw her, whenever she managed to stutter something in his presence. His expectations for his first child, his beliefs in his abilities to run a successful family, had broken to pieces in front of him as she had grown older. Her limited chakra, her lack of leadership ability, her revolting shyness, her failed attempts to learn new skills, everything about her overwhelmed him. Sometimes he hated her, because she made him hate himself. She was his failure, his lack of perfection. But to make his inadequacy bearable, he hounded on her, concentrating on her failures so he would not have to think of his own.

Hating her, though, meant her failed not only as a leader, but as a father. A failure, unable to watch over the family properly. The children were different from before, the customs were changing. Rebellion fluttered dangerous in the hearts of the branch family. Neji swelled with rage. Tradition had to be served, he knew that. Tradition was what had kept the family prosperous for hundreds of years. These young people, they did not respect their elders, nor did they understand that orders were made be followed. Rules had to be obeyed. Why could they not see?

Youth was full of errors. At least, that's what he told himself.

Deep inside him he believed their deviance was the result of his faulty leadership. He wanted to kneel down in front of the clan, resting his head upon the floor in desperate apology. But he had to stand stiff, like he always did, hiding his flaws, trying to avoid humiliating himself. Trying to keep his clan upright and proud, even while it crumbled around him. Conflicting desires roared inside of him, driving him mad, breaking him down inside.

Cracking his heart into pieces. He knit a fake picture around him, hiding his shame behind a garden of lies. Hiding behind biting insults, ignoring Hinata's tears like they never flowed, ignoring Neji's violent, scowling face like he really was smiling behind it all.

He could not really face them, or the clan, and acknowledge that the family was broken and falling apart.

The basin needed to be replaced, but Hiashi didn't want to destroy it: it had been the foundation so long.

He hated that basin. But it had been there for hundreds years. You don't replace something that's been there for hundreds of years.

It stayed there, it stayed there, and it stayed there, looking dejected and miserable. A younger Hinata had tried to climb it once, but she had failed. Hiashi had watched from behind the bars of a window, face hidden in shadow.

Her foot had slipped into the crack, and she had tumbled back onto the grass.

He had turned away, pretending not to have seen.

3. Stigmata - Neji

"The wise man has eyes in his head, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both." - Ecclesiastes 2:14

Heavy wounds were inflicted unto the Son, allowing him to be sacrificed for the eternal life of the chosen and the holy. He wore his imprinted cross with the grace of a man resigned, yet not a savior, for he did not want to them to be redeemed. He did not love them, and he did not teach them. He kept his genius to himself, imparting only to the foolish that their fate was inevitable. God had chosen their future, predestined their lives, and no matter what they did they were doomed to either heaven or to hell. Their gifts and their faults were imparted by God, and God decided what their attributes were going to be. Traits were God given, and therefore unalterable. He stood stiff when his God presented his desires to him, accepting his duty with a frown and a stunted nod.

He wasn't spiritually connected with the Father, but as he well knew, his subservience to this despised figurehead was already predefined. He had to obey…but he did not have to like it. His thoughts were his own when he went down by the river, not to pray, but to brood and reflect on his doomed existence. Anger and pain eroded his heart, leaving it black and empty. There was no room for anything else except grief and bitterness for his fate.

Walking on water quieted him, calmed his nerves. He stretched his hands out wide over the shimmering lake, bowing his head in sorrow. Sorrow, but selfish sorrow. He'd rather they'd all have died instead.

A sacrifice for the chosen of God's family, a Tainted Christ Child.

* * *

I really hope you enjoyed those! I'll be posting three more as 'chaper 2' and the last four as 'chapter 3.' Hope to see some of you bearing with me with these! I've never written drabbles before! 


	2. Chapter 2

4. Breathe - NarutoxHinata, NejixHinata 

This man was beautiful. Sunset danced upon his gentle features, coaxing him to rise one final time. It was a confused child, uncertain as to why he was no longer breathing. This man was lovely, and she had loved him. She had trusted him and made love to him and sacrificed everything for him. 

Yet still he laid there, peacefully surrendered to this unhappy fate. He had left her with such a brilliant smile, sending a weak hand over her cheek almost cheerily, smiling and smiling and smiling like the world was not going to end. Like she would not be left in the darkness, apart from him. 

And she tried to curse the world for taking him, even though he was not hers to be taken away, even though she had just owned that one small piece of him that they could not know. The man behind the status, the responsibility. Even the man behind the beast. She had always believed he was perfect. 

Yet he wasn't. He could not escape that hated disease, that enemy he could not see. You cannot fight an enemy that you cannot see. 

They would not let her near him again, gently pushing her aside and shutting the casket with a light thump. Locking him away forever, apart from her. She shrouded herself, hiding her sorrow beneath a cloud of ebony despair. 

She had never thought she would be able to live her life with him, but they had granted them each other. No, he had declared them wed, and all had obeyed. She had never thought he would die. Someone so vibrantly alive was not allowed to die. It was almost shameful, the way he had fallen. Disease is not supposed to take the mighty. 

Sickness does not know how to cope with unrealistic happiness. The only thing it could find to do, it seemed, was take him from her faster. 

Dead. She had held his still burning face against her chest, murmuring pet names into his deaf ears. 

She returned to the house of her father, returned to the place she never wanted to return to, empty-handed. Husbandless. Childless. She had thought they would have had more time. A lot more time. 

She breathed in. She breathed out. She breathed in. She breathed out. Pain rattled her chest at each reluctant gasp for air. Thoughts of his presence haunted her, crawling from the burning, aching pieces of her heart into her conscious mind. His smiling features seemed impossible to forget. He was too precious to throw away. 

Sometimes she would burst out sobbing, clutching her hair and moaning deeply. Tears streamed down her cheeks. 

Neji was ever so patient with this newcomer to his meditative art. Her cousin's breath was calm and even, ever so light, ever so soft. He was used to pushing lost loved ones from him mind, forcing them to flee into a part of him he no longer acknowledged was there. 

Replacing them with the flowing water, the sound of the forest, the song of the birds. And now, the sound of another human being, breathing and living beside him. 

She had now lost like he had lost. 

Nobody had ever been with him in this cove of blooming trees. He did not know if he liked her presence or not. 

She was getting better, day by day. She relaxed, her body unwound. 

He eventually accepted this wounded woman into his world, and even came to anticipate her delicate presence beside him. Soon they breathed in unison, in and out, in and out, caught up in each other. They did not speak, because it was not necessary. They did not touch, because it was forbidden. They did not dream, because their dreams could not come true. 

She breathed in. He breathed in. She breathed out. He breathed out. A strange companionship, knit together without words, yet somehow absolute and unbreakable. 

This man, she thought, is beautiful too. 

5. Cage - Hinata and Neji 

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird. -Joseph Conrad

I cradled a tiny carcass in my cupped palms, an aching feeling clogging my chest. I could feel my breath; I could feel my heart beating; I could feel my legs ache underneath my huddled body. But this prone insect could no longer feel any of these things. I whispered unsteady apologies to this sentient being, my carelessness its downfall. It had seemed so fascinating to me at the time, its legs moving fast and furious down the great expanse of my arm. 

I had diligently created a home for my fascinating guest, filling his encasement with sturdy twigs and carefully placing him inside. I had kept my gaze on him for awhile as he explored, eyes wide, engrossed in his movements. 

However, children are quickly distracted, and I had left him, on a journey through my own wild imagination. 

When I had remembered, I had eagerly returned to my companion, but he had already gone. The guilt had flowed rapidly through my body, and I had opened the jar tentatively, desperately, as if that might have revived him. 

It hadn't. His limp body had lain belly up at the bottom of the jar, miserable and rejected. 

"You should have taken it out sooner!" My father had growled fiercely, glaring at my quivering form before stomping back into the house. 

"I'm sorry…" I had whispered, not to him, but to the insect. I hadn't known that if you keep something in a cage too long, it withers. I hadn't known that if something can't fly free, it loses its will to live. 

The moist dirt clung inside my fingernails as I created a small dent in the dirt. An unmarked grave for this tiny piece of the universe, made important for just a single moment. 

I vowed never to hurt anything again. I vowed I would never cage anything ever again. 

Neji leans awkwardly on the doorframe, face gaunt and haunted. I wordlessly lead his daughter to him, her body now violated by an ancient curse. He stares at me. I cannot look at him. 

Caught in this cage of repetition, walking blindly through this cycle of pain and imprisonment. My father had told me I should have opened the jar sooner. We all should take our prisoners out and set them free, refusing to follow this dry but consecrated foolishness any longer. 

Yet still I follow it. I follow it like my father, the man I had believed I would never imitate. I see the destruction he wrought with his unyielding ways, yet still I follow him, stepping in footsteps centuries old. I know how much he has broken me, yet still I walk. I do not know how to make a new path. 

I hadn't believed Neji about fate, because I had believed in the future. Now I want to believe him, because it takes off my responsibility, makes my path unalterable. Makes all my sins unavoidable, made me subject to destiny. It means I cannot hold myself accountable; it means I can cower and hide from this unfathomable guilt. 

But I can't. I can see this cycle and see that it can be ended. Yet still I walk in the shadows of my father. What drives us to repeat our sins? What drives us to make the same mistakes, over and over and over? What drives us farther and farther into oblivion? 

I lie in bed at night, awake, awake. Never sleeping. 

The little girl gazes at me innocently, not suspecting my upcoming cruelty. I push my face into my pillow, trying to drown in my own tears. 

She screams and fails wildly in agony, sobbing for her father. They hold her back harshly: they have done this before. We have all experienced this before. I see Neji inside her eyes. 

I am afraid. 

Neji stands in the shadows, his silent form my unyielding protection. I am well aware that he will not fail me, and I am not afraid of my enemies. 

I'm afraid of myself, of the monster I've become. 

Neji is failing on me, withering, slowly fading away. He cannot fly free; he is bound to me. 

He has been caged, yet now I am the one with the key. 

A young girl presses her hands down upon sodden dirt, enclosing her departed companion in his final tomb. 

6. Father - Neji, Hinata, Hanabi and Hiashi 

He is my father, a perfect man with a solemn face, guiding my actions and praising my success. He is your father and my father and your deceased wraith, deceiving you with that face that is and is not. He is cruel to me and to you, because I feel you and thus we feel each other. I see why he saves that smile of contentment for you, only for you, even while he cuts a dull knife straight down my chest with this smile, this expression of approval I can never hope to see. 

He is my enemy, a copy of someone I used to call my father, a creature who feeds upon my heart and rots it. I developed this burning in my chest for him, a clashing of emotions that should never be, that should be forbidden to meet. I love the man he resembles, and despise him for it. 

I know this disgusted feeling dwells in him, for I know it too. It scuttles around in the deepest of places until you cannot ignore it anymore, and try to cover it up and trap it beneath a thin layer of gauze. Yet it still scuttles, and you can glimpse it through the veil. The veil is too thin, but you can't find anything stronger. What if it escapes? 

I don't know what will happen to me if it escapes. I can already feel the burning sensation probing my forehead with anticipation, sending small shivers of fear throughout my nerves. 

My cousin is at the edge of breaking, yet the only thing he can do in this family is hold in his frustrations, anguishing over them only when the darkness blankets him with a safe covering. I wonder if the covering will be enough for us, and how much longer it will take before I explode. 

He is my father and your father and his father, yet he is split, a stained glass window that has been shattered, its pleasant story cracked into three incomplete shards. A trinity of identities, caught into one body, one association of father. 

Father, who are you, and what do you want? This fatherly figure, an assurance of strength, this angry teacher, intent on my failures and drained by my incompetence, and this hated replacement for someone who should not have been taken from me. 

We hate him and we love him and we despise his very soul. You both are different from me, because you cannot see his gentle side. Not because you don't try to see, but because he never shows it to you. Yet because of you, I know that he is not good. I know that he doesn't treat anyone else like he does me. 

Because of you, I can see he is not a bad person, because he cares about you. Though I am the rejected daughter, through you I can see that awkward affection he tries to show with gruff gestures and awkward words. I can see that there is a crack in this stony encasement that he does not allow me to see. I can see a gentle light shining through, yet it never strikes me. 

He is my father and your father and his father, a complicated puzzle that refuses to fit together. Whenever you think you have him, he breaks yet again, and you must start over from the beginning. Through my cage I can only see pieces of him, the bars cutting his silhouette straight like a knife. Through my pain I can see him, but blinded by tears he is blurred and distorted. Through my youth I can see him, yet youth is blinded by idealistic pictures that crumble with age. 

He is my father and your father and his father, a man incomplete and broken by our damaged sight. I watch you, you caged bird, you wide-eyed child, you rejected princess, and wonder what you see. Can you see all of him; can you fix the puzzle? Am I lost and are you found? Or are we all lost together? 

----- Really hope you liked them! On a side note, the first part of #5 really happened to me. XD 


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